Excavation equipment, and in particular earth working buckets such as cable shovel dippers, are used, amongst others, for heavy earthwork applications such as mining and excavation and many have components which are particularly subjected to wear by friction against the earthen materials during normal use, and which are thus designed to be replaceable. Among these components, those which are perhaps the most subjected to wear are the teeth which are subjected to direct engagement against the material to be transported by the bucket. To this end, the teeth are mounted to corresponding tooth holders, but even the tooth holders are subjected to wear and must eventually be replaced. Furthermore, various replaceable shrouds can be used to protect edge portions. In this specification, replaceable wear components such as tooth holders, lip shrouds, wing shrouds, corner shrouds, etc., which are removably secured to buckets will be referred to generally as wear members.
It is known in the art to mechanically attach the wear members to an associated edge of the bucket. In many applications, a spool, often C-shaped, is vertically inserted through aligned openings defined in the wear member and the bucket, i.e. the parts to be connected, and held in place with a wedge. The wedge is forcefully hammered by a workman using a sledge hammer to jam the rear surface of the spool against the wear member and the bucket to be connected. To lock the wedge and spool together, a lip provided at an end of the wedge is typically bent down around the C-clamp thereby preventing the assembly from becoming loose and falling out of the opening. The combination is known in the art as spool and wedge assemblies.
There were inconveniences to the spool and wedge assemblies which the instant approach aims to address; in particular, the process of assembling the spool and wedge, and removing them for replacing the wear member, was quite demanding for workmen.